Del.icio.us have finally released their new Firefox extension. It delivers even tighter integration than the previous one – which was quiet convenient itself! It goes so far as to propose to replace the Firefox bookmarking system itself…and after a few days of use I have to say I am very impressed.
The first extension provided two buttons for del.icio.us. One that took you to your del.icio.us page and a second that provided a convenient pop-up window that allowed you to tag the page you were browsing. The new extension retains these functions (albeit in a remarkably smoother and more aesthetically pleasing manner) and goes a step further by adding a del.icio.us menu and new menubar.
When you install the new extension, you are prompted to add your existing Firefox bookmarks to your del-icio.us account. Having done this when I installed the old extension months ago, I was loathe to end up with duplicates, so avoided this step. I do wish that I could have done this as I have been running the two systems in parallel for the past few months and most things have ended up in del.icio.us, but a few have been confined to Firefox only. Not a big deal.
I am particularly fond of the pop-out menu that lists your category tags. You can browse down and immediately see the pages which are tagged with each. An awesome addition. Additionally, the menubar conveniently provides your last few tagged pages as immediate clicks, and the menu allows you all the control you could desire over your bookmarks. Convenience is the name of the game with the new extension. There seems to be multiple ways in which your most popular, most frequent or most recent tagged pages are made immediately accessible.
With the new extension, you now can easily have all your bookmarks instantly synchronized between any browser on any machine that you use. You have instant access to your bookmarks handily sorted regardless of the quantity and with having to struggle through manual organization via the Firefox bookmarking system.
Update: Impressive. I tried to add a bookmark to my Firefox bookmarks today, only to discover that del.icio.us was watching. It asked me if I wanted to add the mark to my del.icio.us collection as well. I was offered the chance to keep being asked should I try to subvert del.icio.us in the future. I am actually impressed at the immersion of the tracking extension into my system, although one is reminded of how much of what I do is increasingly tracked by all the little ‘services’ to which I subscribe.